Though Hope is Frail
by icor
Summary: You take her hand in yours, palm to palm, and then you know: you are not enough. CloudAerith.


_Though they go mad they shall be sane,  
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;  
Though lovers be lost love shall not;  
And death shall have no dominion._

xxx

You know nothing of her past, and she focuses all her energies into pretending there has not been a second before the present you share. From the way she talks, always a little out of sync with the initial impression you all got of a cheerful Flower Girl, you can tell there's a roughness there; a childhood trapped behind glass. You are no good at playing the sympathetic role, and her vague answers drive you insane when you deign to try. She speaks freely to the Planet, to the sky. You understand her when she speaks in riddles; yet she speaks in riddles when she wants to be understood.

Her mother, no matter how kind, cannot comprehend a past riddled with ghosts either, can only fill the blanks in with blunt fact. Even still, even after learning about those seven years lost, it sounds cold, sterile, coming from her. The depth of it all does not settle into your senses, would only ever mean something if spoken by Aerith herself; she affords you nothing but smudges, scattered in the wind like deserts sands, and the sum of it all is less than the red streaks left behind when you wipe your fingers across your trousers.

x

You do not know it yet, but there are needles in your past as well. While she may be vague about what came before these days of yours that have somehow entwined, you commit crimes, you lie, swearing black is white. There's a wall of mako swimming in your blood, like the voices of her ancestors which fill her veins. The difference between you both is that the only voice you hear is your own.

There are more holes in your memory than the roads you travel, and she stares right through them. There's a familiar loneliness there that neither of you will own up to, and one evening she tells you she can't decided whether your eyes are the colour of the sky or as deep as the oceans.

x

She smooths her hands across tomes as old as the canyon that cradles you, palms flat and fingers spread out like branches. You watch as she mutters under her breath, half-words and awkward sentences—she never did learn to read in the slums or the white space before that—and it is not entirely unfamiliar; her eyes dart around the page for something to cling to, desperately, as if it will validate this unbalanced existence of hers.

And when she finds replications of Ancient runes, identical to those you watch her absent mindedly trace into the dirt with the base of her staff, her eyes water and your chest tightens in the same moment. Look, Cloud, she says, reaching for your hand, letting you feel the aged yellow pages, placing her own atop it—I'm not mad.

No, you think; but you are alone. (You take her hand in yours, palm to palm, and then you know: you are not enough.)

x

Over the months you pick apart the things you like about her. You like the way you are always the first and last person she speaks to, even though more often than not she consciously changes the topic whenever you try to intrude. You like the way she listens, the way she always smiles as the others flock to her to unload their burdens, even if she is cracked on the inside. You like the way her skin feels. You like the way she fits.

Right now, you like the way your hands flex around her throat, the way your fingers press against her pulse. Something tells you you probably shouldn't enjoy the way her windpipe is crushed in your grip; but whether this is mako or poison more twisted, your fists are flying and the relief is absolute.

The world beyond your eyes blurs and becomes block colours, but the Flower Girl is as grey as anything you have ever known. The bruises, the blood, everything of your making—those are clear. Those are burning. The way you feel makes you believe nobody has ever gone mad before.

There, in the ruins of her temple, the ghosts that settle into her bones are nothing compared to your bloody knuckles as you shatter them.

x

When she drowns, her hair billows all around her. The holy waters turn red, pink and then clear with her blood. It seeps into the creases of your fingers, clots under your nails, and you cannot escape the way she smiled upon the alter, the sound of steel splaying skin.

In the aftermath, as you lay in the abandoned houses, there is nothing but quiet all around you. You become aware of several things; namely, the weight of your own body, of the pounding in your stomach; of the way the whole of her has suddenly slipped through your fingers. It is as if you are floating in a world made of lead, and nothing will stop the shaking when you realise that this is your life now. This is the world without her.

(And it aches whenever you drink water, after this, as if you too are drowning. Punching the wall is all you can do to stop yourself from throwing up, and you spit into the dirt when the taste does not leave you.)

x

You sink in your own way, of course. The Lifestream flows in brilliant threads, and the mako in your blood echoes until your senses are so abstracted you cannot keep yourself safe inside your own skin. And so you drown, the shades of the past making bright colours dance behind your eyelids.

Why you continue to breathe is beyond you; the Lifestream is not made of ripples or waves or gushing currents, but of a thousand cautious fingertips dropping you like a stone into the depths of your memory. And once the truth is out, once the past is in place, you see everything she did. It is then that you realise—she is dead. She will not wash up on the shore at dusk as you do.

You sit there, between the shelter of the sky and the depths of the ocean, and the sun still sets, the moon does not refuse to rise, the stars are no dimmer than ever before. The world turns without her, and you have not yet lost all of her; she falls apart in pieces, even now, losing herself inch by inch.

It is this that hurts the most.

x

The red sky at night brings you no comfort. You list the reasons why you fight, sharpen your sword, try to wipe the blood from your fingers. None of this will win you back what you have lost; you can save the world and the fates will not even reward you with the chance to say goodbye.

She would have wanted this, you convince yourself. She would have wanted you to save her Planet (but who are you to take away her right to be selfish?), and yet some cruel part of you wishes the sky would hurry up and fall.

x

It is here that the beginnings end. You are in the darkness, falling without motion, blinded by the black. Holy has doused the flames and _he_ has fallen, and though you cannot tell up from down, none of that matters.

You understand too well why she reaches out for you; and in that moment, all is clear. You rise on the crest of a wave, spat out from the ocean, and all this talk of Aerith being dead is ridiculous. You cannot explain the feeling that washes through you as you reach back, but it is as if the whole world stopped for this.

Your fingers do not even brush, and perhaps they were never going to; and, yes, this was never meant to be. The light will fade, you will rise, and the world will be made real again. All of this shall pass, like the turning of the tide, and you will sink into your skin once more.

This world is empty without her, and your heart is no home for a ghost.

x

(And though hope is frail, though Death is the victor, you think you can meet her there. You try not to believe, but—the space in between changes nothing. She is to the earth as you are to the sky, and somehow, somehow, you're going to meet in the middle;)

after all, faith alone will not make the impossible any less likely to happen.


End file.
